


haloperidol

by riyku



Series: Skam Sunday [15]
Category: SKAM (TV)
Genre: Ableist Language, Alternate Universe, Bipolar Disorder, M/M, Mental Health Issues, POV Second Person, Recreational Drug Use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-17
Updated: 2017-09-17
Packaged: 2018-12-30 22:51:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12118929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/riyku/pseuds/riyku
Summary: He's trying to open a locker the first time you see him.  Blue coat.  Red hat.  Hair that curls against the side of his neck and a slight sneer that looks at home on his face.





	haloperidol

**Author's Note:**

> many thanks to tebtosca. forever and always.
> 
> i tagged this one AU, but it's more AU-adjacent. also, a warning for a rather ambiguous (but hopeful!) ending. i'm adding some more warnings in the endnotes here for those of you who need them, because the additional warnings contain massive spoilers for the ending of the story.

The walls in your room are white. They're blank, stale. Not at all safe. The lack of color makes the small space seem even smaller. So you cover them with magazine clippings, two guitars, some of your artwork, the collection of snapbacks you rarely wear. The project takes three days and by the end it's still not perfect, but it will have to do. It adds some dimension to them at least, helps muffle the echo. You hate that echo. You don't draw on the walls, not directly, not like you did that one time, back when all of this started. 

Sometimes, if the light comes in exactly right and you're laying on a specific spot on your floor, legs angled up against the couch and neck craned at a forty-five degree angle, you can still see the old color bleeding through the new paint. The spot where the wall and two of your knuckles had to be patched after the pointless anger and faceless frustration had dissipated and the heavy anchor tied you down.

You're not proud of it, but it's one place on your wall that you don't cover up. Not this time.

\---

The school is new. It smells the same as the old one, like paper and people and that undercurrent of institutional disinfectant. The students look the same. The teachers have familiar droning voices and familiar good intentions. You spend most of the first day turned around, keep finding yourself in the wrong wing and on the wrong floor, wearing the wrong skin.

He's trying to open a locker the first time you see him. Blue coat. Red hat. Hair that curls against the side of his neck and a slight sneer that looks at home on his face. Immediately, you want to run your finger down the slope of his nose, touch the crooked line where his lips meet, trace the arch of his eyebrow.

Your next class starts in two minutes, and you have a hunch it's on the other side of the building and three floors up but you're still here, watching as two boys come to a stop next to him. There are complicated handshakes and shoulder thumps and a surreptitious passing of weed from one pocket to another. There is a throaty laugh that sounds the same way sunshine feels on your face and dimples and a beautiful, gappy-toothed smile.

\---

You learn his name. Isak. You memorize the paths he takes everyday throughout the building. The time he usually eats lunch, what he eats, the bus he takes and his locker number.

One morning, you brush up against him in a crowded hallway, trying to make it look like an accident. It's the first time you've been this brave since. Since. He's blank-faced, buried under his snapback and hoodie and heavy coat, the music he has plugged into his ears. This close, you can see the soft, downy hair on the upswing of his jaw. This close, his eyes are a much deeper green than you expected.

You apologize, mumbling and quiet because he won't hear you, palm his upper arm as you slide past, then retreat into a less populated corner. You have to press your mouth to the hand that touched him. Kiss it. Three times for good luck.

\---

Therapists have taught you about a thing they like to call shared reality. A double-speak, psycho-babble coping technique. When your thoughts hit fast-forward and your confidence spikes and everything begins to bend, you're supposed to ask yourself if the person sitting across from you on the bus or in the cafe or walking toward you down the street sees how the sun just now broke through the clouds the moment you started thinking of Isak. If they can see how the veins in the hand that you used to touched him are rearranging themselves, beginning to spell something out and how it might give you an answer, a definitive yes or no, if you could only decipher the dialect.

Rewind.

Rewind. 

Forget it. The woman climbing onto the bus probably can't see these things, even if you point them out to her. She's pulling her trolley behind her and it nearly tips as the bus starts off, apples rolling in all directions and when she leans down to catch them, a pill bottle falls out of her purse. You stop it with the toe of your shoe and hand it back to her, smiling, careful to not look at the label. 

You don't want her reality, and she doesn't want yours. You can think of only one other person whose reality you wish you could share.

\---

Isak follows you outside and that's good. Better for it to be darker, where he can't see the nicotine stains on your fingers and the slightly yellow color of your teeth and the flush you can feel heating up your face. You climb onto the bench, thinking of James Dean, Brando, Newman, throwing on a little leading man swagger so his eyes will stay on you, toss in a joke about sucking cock just to gauge his reaction.

He passes the joint back to you and you are wholly fascinated by him. The sound of his voice, the cough he muffles behind his hand, the nervous way he keeps licking his lips that somehow immediately disarms you, settles into your bones. The joint is still a little damp from his lips. Kiss-adjacent. 

That night, you trace the outline of Isak's body onto your wall with the tip of your finger. Everything you've committed to memory. The swooping bridge of his nose and the high curve of his cheekbones. You draw him with angel wings and the lines are the pale, neon blue color of artificially lit water.

\---

You're standing in his kitchen. The light is taking on a strange quality. The pink smudges on his cheeks glow without the benefit of a blacklight. The empty beer can feels flimsy in your hand and you're trying to hide all of your imperfections behind terrible jokes about landmines, when the truth underneath all of it is that _you_ are the landmine. You're the reason a piece of Sonja will never be the same again, and you're the reason you should walk away while you still can, and you're the reason Isak's leaning in, peeking up at you through his eyelashes, lips begging to be properly kissed. The air crackles, makes ripples against your skin.

You don't kiss him, but you would have. He doesn't kiss you, but he would have.

\---

You slip again. It's happened before, recently, more often than you admit. Fast forward, pause, shudder to a stop and you're laying in a bed that isn't yours with your hand going tingly and numb from the hour Isak's spent with his head resting on your arm.

The weight of him sinks you into the bed and his mouth is sweet once you've kissed away the taste of the weed you smoked. The press of his body against yours puts down roots in your chest and you wonder if there’s a realistic way to slice yourself down the center and pull him inside of you. Keep him safe. Isak's talking about parallel universes and infinite possibilities and you hint at things only a very few people know about you. The way he looks at you sometimes makes you wonder if he already knows without you having to tell him.

There's a knock at the door. A voice calling out from the other side of it.

\---

Sonja's hand is on your knee. Her touch is very familiar. In that moment, you know that you love her, but not in the way she deserves, and that she loves you, but not in the way you need.

She asks you if it's happening again, and you tell her it isn't. It's not a lie. This is completely different than before. You've never been so unafraid. So impossibly _happy_. Your thoughts have never been so bell-ring clear and you've never seen anything so bright as Isak's smile as he shifts in close to kiss your mouth.

\---

The chairs in the classroom are set up in a circle. You blink, and all the faces around you change, and your hands are slick with sweat and you can't figure out why you're not wearing shoes. You blink again and everything snaps back into place, except you've managed to lose your pen. Your notebook is gone. There's a chemical taste coating the back of your throat, your veins feel like they've been injected with lead and you can't move your arms, as if the connection from them to your brain has been severed.

The colors are going dull, becoming murky and the voice is back on the other side of the door. Make that _voices_ , a dim, collective hum with one distinct voice rising above the rest. Isak.

Isak.

Isak reading aloud from a textbook. Something about mitochondrial DNA. Your tongue is dry and sandy as you try to lick your lips, begin to croak something out. You still can't move your arms and your fingers feel thick and stupid.

"There you are." Isak stops reading. There's a rustle of clothing, a soft scrape of chair legs against linoleum. His hand is cool and dry on your sweaty forehead. 

Gradually, you peel your eyes open. The walls are white. Not at all safe. You follow the line of your arm to your wrist, where Isak is unhooking the restraint, further up the line of his arm to his white uniform, the badge swinging from his neck like a clock pendulum. 

"It's nice to have you back, Even." Isak's strong fingers begin rubbing the blood back into your hand.

This reality is reasserting itself in increments. A single window set high into the wall, a metal cage over the light fixture, institutional-issued pajama bottoms. You prefer the other reality much more, the one with chlorine kisses, neon angel wings and Isak tangling his fist in your hair.

"I dreamed I loved you," you say slowly.

Isak's smile is small, still feels like sunshine. "That one again." He helps you sit up, holds you steady while your head swims from the change in altitude, allows you to hook your chin over his shoulder. 

His book is open where he abandoned it on his chair, a small drawing marking his place. You remember making it, using crayon because they don't allow you pencils in this place. They're too sharp. A tiny thrill breaks through the chemistry in your bloodstream. Isak kept it. It has to mean something.

 

\--end

 

thanks for reading!

**Author's Note:**

> okay. hello. warnings for a hairpin turn ending where it really goes AU. more warnings for manic psychosis and institutionalization, and an ending where Even and Isak are not together (but in my heart, they're getting there. no universe exists in which these two are not together).


End file.
